Sunday, March 17. 2013

There was a lot of good work done by a lot of good people and here is a sampling of what was going on. Of course I did not record images for all the work, but you get the idea. Still, a lot of photos to post, if you do not mind.

Panels

Victor Humphreys was prime painting the moldings and the panel inserts for the new doors for Chicago Great Western X 38. As the saying goes - there is always something to be done. In this case, every week, we take a step closer to completing these doors. Good friend and volunteer Kirk Warner was visiting from Florida - he and Victor are working on getting some new glass cut for the project.

The Other Side of the Coin

Or - the other side of the panels. They also got primed, in this case with a different color primer, since the interior will get a lighter coat of finish paint.

Window Post Caps

There continues to be real progress on Cleveland Transit System 4223. This PCC car is getting interior window post caps, here shown with Eric Lorenz fighting the good fight.

Window Post Caps

Loren Tweed is also working hard on the 4223 project, the current task of installing the post caps. They have all but a handful of 'stinkers' installed. The 'stinkers' being a few that need more persuasion to fit properly.

Tenons

We made major progress on the two 'special' round top windows for the Boston & Maine 1094 passenger car. A lot of different volunteers contributed to the progress - here Bill Peterson is working on tenons for the round top rail.

Coming Together

The tenons have been cut and fit for the first window and Rich Witt is working to trim and fit the joint for an exact match.

Brian Patterson Photo

All the parts are fit and clamped into alignment and a hardboard template fixed in place. Then a pattern cutting router bit follows that to finish cut the exact curves and shape. Tim Peters, Buzz Morisette, and Bob Kutella discuss ways to work with the grain of the pieces rather than fight them.

Chips Flying

Rich, Tim and Buzz are making the chips fly on the first sash with the pattern.

Number Two

Rich has just helped the tricky routing on sash number two. The point here is to inspect the job carefully and do any touch up work while the template is still in place and the tooling is set up.

A Jig

The next tricky wood working job du jour (it seemed every job was tricky today) shows Tim cutting a special springboard jig to aid in creating new molding for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.

Trail One

Time for the first try at the molding profile, using custom ground knives on our spindle shaper. In this respect every job is special and a variety of guides and jigs need to be designed and put in place to make quality work - and do that safely. It is always a learning experience - ask Tim if you do not believe me.

If At First

You do not succeed try again. There are a number of factors in play as Victor Humphreys and Tim run another blank piece of white oak through the machine. Height, width, position of the knives, feed rate, how the work is supported, etc.

Next

Let's try again. If you look at the series of photos above you will see things added and changed to the set up as one by one a potential problem is noted and we fix that area. Now, if only we had somebody that ran a shaper for a living for 40 years, he would probably converge on the best way quickly and be laughing at us.

The Door

Time to end this post and show you the door. That is, the new door we are making for our depot. The last two pieces were tenoned and are in the process if final fitting.

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Comments

Brian L. about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverTue, 03-17-2015 21:34Display first, operation later. It
needs to be watertight to be on
display with the streamliners in
yard 5, then we can start working
on putting the [...]

Roger Kramer about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverTue, 03-17-2015 19:04Hello David S We would love to
have the Silver Pony in operation.
At this time the coach dept does
not have enough volunteers and $ to
complete [...]

David S about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverTue, 03-17-2015 15:39On display? No plans for it to ever
become operational? I know it
wouldn't exactly "fit in" with the
heavyweights, but I bet it would be
very popular [...]

Brian L. about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverSun, 03-15-2015 13:18We have 3 "modernized"
Heavyweights, IC 2804, GTW 5316,
and UP 501. UP 501 is used for the
Terror on the Railroad event, GTW
5316 needs some major [...]

Chris about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverFri, 03-13-2015 02:06It looks like IRM DOES have about
three streamliner era coaches.
Though two are modernized
heavyweights, and one is more of a
luxury chair car. [...]

Brian L. about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverThu, 03-12-2015 11:20Ted,
The car started life as a near copy
of CB&Q 1923; our operational RPO
Baggage car. I have not managed to
find the number of the car it was
[...]

Brian L. about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverThu, 03-12-2015 11:11Not a whole lot. Operational cars
take priority obviously. Hopefully
we'll have the materials we need to
get it on display within a year or
two.

Brian L. about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverThu, 03-12-2015 11:04If we were to go after any
lightweight coaches, they would
either be junk or cost tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Postwar lightweights [...]

Roger Kramer about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverThu, 03-12-2015 10:57Hello Ted, Our info from CB&Q
Hist Society confirms that the
"bag" was once an RPO and was
converted to a baggage car.
Please help the cause by [...]

Roger Kramer about The Old Bag and the Silver BeaverThu, 03-12-2015 10:50Hi Dave, Regarding the Silver Pony
there are plans for future
installation of some windows but
nothing scheduled for the next six
months. We will be [...]